Life Habits of Ants

Ant is a kind of insect with social living habits, which belongs to Hymenoptera. Ants' antennae show obvious knee-shaped bending, and the first and second nodes of the pumpkin cart in the abdomen are nodular, generally without wings. Only mating males and fertile females have wings, and females lose their wings after mating. Ants are completely metamorphosed insects, which become adults only after egg, larva and pupa stages. The larvae and queens cannot live independently and are completely fed by workers. Workers are all female, but can not reproduce, responsible for taking care of the queen and larvae, and then gradually begin to dig holes, collect food and other more complex work. Worker ants come in different shapes. Some have large heads and jaws and are responsible for fighting and defending ant nests. They are also called soldiers.

The living habits of ants

Ants are a typical social group. There are three social elements: the same kind of individuals can cooperate with each other to take care of the larvae; there is a clear division of labor; at least two generations overlap in the ant colony, and the offspring can take care of the previous generation within a period of time.

Ants are definitely architectural experts, and there are many chambers in the nest, each of which has its own use. Among them, the queen has the largest compartment. There is a kind of ant in the desert. Its nest looks like a castle from a distance. It is 4.5 meters high. After those nests are abandoned, they will be used by some animals as their own nests. The bottom of the nest is for the queen, whose task is to eat, mate and have children. The ant nest is strong, safe and comfortable, and the road extends in all directions. There is a circle of soil outside the ant colony, and there are some places to store food, which is ventilated, cool, warm in winter and cool in summer, and the food is not easy to spoil.

Ants are also famous architects in the animal world. They use their jaws to dig holes in the ground and carry sand one by one to build their nests. The "room" of the nest will remain in its original shape unless the soil dries badly. Ant research expert Walter Chilgail models the nest. He poured liquid metal, paraffin or orthodontic plaster into the nest, solidified and dug it out. "you can get a structure that goes deep underground," he said. " According to his observation, the area closest to the surface has the most ant chambers, and the deeper the depth, the fewer the ant chambers and the smaller the area. "to do this, ants have to know how deep they are relative to the ground," he said. " But how they are "constructed" remains a mystery. Chilgail speculates that ants may measure depth by sensing levels of carbon dioxide in the soil.

The lifespan of ants is very long, workers can survive for a few weeks to 3-10 years, and queens can survive for more than ten years or decades, or even more than 100 years. An ant nest can grow in one place for 1 to 10 years.

Social division of labor of ant colony

There are generally four levels of queen, female, male and worker ants. Some species live in the nests of other species, and their larvae are fed by host workers.

1. Ant queen: a fertile female, or mother ant, or ant king, is the largest in the group, especially with large abdomen, well-developed reproductive organs, short antennae, small chest and feet, winged, dewinged or wingless. The main responsibilities are to lay eggs, reproduce and manage the extended family of this group.

2. Female ants: a female who has the ability to reproduce after mating, and then takes off her wings to become a new queen, commonly known as "princess" or "angel".

3. Male ants: or father ants. The head is small, the upper jaw is underdeveloped, and the antennae are slender. There are well-developed reproductive organs and external genitalia, the main function is to mate with the queen, commonly known as "prince" or "mosquito".

4. Worker ants: also known as professional ants. Wingless, is a rudimentary female, generally the smallest individual in the group, but the largest in number. The compound eye is small, and one eye is very small or absent. The upper jaw, antennae and three pairs of feet are well developed and are good at walking. Worker ants have no reproductive ability. The main duties of workers are to build and expand nests, collect food, and feed larvae and queens. In order to hibernate, ants eat a lot of food in autumn to store body fat, and they don't eat for the rest of the winter. Because of this, workers in the colony look for food almost every day to ensure that each member of the colony can eat enough food to protect against the cold in winter.

5. Soldier ants: "soldier ants" is a common name for large worker ants of some ant species, which is a female with no reproductive ability. With a large head and a well-developed upper jaw, it can crush hard food and become a combat weapon when defending groups.

The feeding characteristics of ants

The eating habits of ants can be divided into four categories: meat, omnivorous, vegetarian and vegetarian.

1. Meat: it is best to take insects as the main food, the species of pure carnivorous ants are less in the proportion of ants, but each kind of carnivorous ants have different food preferences, so not all insects can be used as food for all carnivorous ants. Therefore, it is necessary to keep the kind of insect that the ant likes to eat, otherwise it will often mistakenly think that there is enough food, but the ant will not eat or starve to death, so if you cannot prepare the food that the ant likes, it will be very frustrating to raise it.

2. Omnivorous and carnivorous: there are more omnivorous and carnivorous ants in proportion, and they can also eat both vegetarian and meat. However, it is usually easier to attract them by eating meat, and they are almost not picky about insects. In addition to insects as food, it can also be fed with animal protein. Examples of available foods are as follows: carnivorous and dead insects, plus fruit and honeydew. When feeding, you can feed insects, fish (raw), cooked pork, cooked chicken and so on.

3. Omnivorous and vegetarian: there are many overlaps between omnivorous and carnivorous ant species. the only difference is that when insect carcasses and sweets appear at the same time, omnivorous and vegetarian ants are more likely to be attracted by sweets.

4. Vegetarian: the proportion of vegan ant species in all ant species is small, and some ants only eat some special plants or fruit sap. Like foreign leaf-cutting ants, they bring leaves back to their nests to plant fungi and take fungi as the only food. So raising this kind of ants is the same as raising pure carnivorous ants, you must first make sure that the food is ready, otherwise it will be very frustrating.